The Day the Bernie Dream
Died

By Daniel Greenfield
SultankKnish.Blogspot.com

Near Philadelphia’s City Hall, an obese woman
wearing a marijuana leaf bikini was telling a
television reporter why she supported Bernie
Sanders. City Hall, once the tallest building in the
world, is a gloriously magnificent edifice whose
pillars are held up by representatives of all the
races of the world and whose clock tower is topped
by a 37-foot statue of William Penn, was besieged by
Sandernistas.

The
Democratic convention was underway. Bernie Sanders
had endorsed Hillary Clinton. But his followers
still believed. If not in Bernie, then in the
radical movement that had coalesced around him.

A cheerful woman wearing a “Bernie or Bust” t-shirt
told me that even if Bernie won, she would be voting
for Jill Stein and the Green Party. It was unclear
how Bernie Sanders could possibly win. Let alone how
Jill Stein could win. But Bernie and Jill were
against drones, banks and GMOs while Hillary Clinton
was for them. And the mood grew uglier as the
temperature approached one hundred degrees.

The crazier elements had converged around the
historic Arch Street United Methodist Church which
was “training” activists to protest non-violently.
There were illegal aliens in green t-shirts laughing
uproariously and scowling elderly Trotsky fan club
members wearing BDS buttons surrounded by posters
denouncing America for its “ongoing war” in Iraq
(against ISIS) not to mention Syria, Yemen, Somalia,
Pakistan and most of the rest of the world. The
Revolutionary Communist party marched angrily past.

There were also “Bernie Peacekeepers” wearing
plastic placards proclaiming that they do not
support violence of any kind. If anyone doubted
their seriousness, the placards had a rainbow peace
sign.

But the core Bernie elements had gathered around
City Hall. They had marched the day before when
there was no convention. And they were going to
march today. A giant banner denounced the “racist
drug war”. The ragged crowd carrying it had clearly
found themselves on the wrong end of that war.
Younger fans wore Bernie t-shirts. Entire families
with dreadlocks held up handmade signs.

There was something millenarian and apocalyptic
about the scene. Everyone knew that Bernie was going
to announce that the revolution was over. And no one
wanted to go home.

Officially the Democrats were here to coronate
Hillary. MSNBC had set up a giant stage outside the
Independence Visitor Center where tickets were being
distributed to Independence Hall and its recreations
of the rooms where the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution were signed. MSNBC
personalities leered at viewers from giant video
monitors and NBC staffers had swamped the
Independence Hall bathrooms. But on the ground, it
was all Bernie, Bernie and more Bernie.

There were no Hillary shirts in the streets. It was
all Bernie. Silhouettes of Bernie’s glasses, Bernie
and his bird, Bernie as a strapping young socialist
and Bernie speaking to the masses. He was their
Stalin or Saddam. His image was on shirts, signs and
banners. Meanwhile elderly DNC delegates wearing
blue lanyards nervously shuttled between bars
eagerly catering to delegates. The painted donkeys
in the squares, a tired gimmick, mostly went
ignored. Even an “I’m With Her” button was a rarity.

In a hushed voice, a DNC delegate told me that it
was important to elect someone in the middle. But
the message in the streets was dramatically
different. It wasn’t even about Bernie anymore.
Bernie Sanders had tried to address his supporters
asking them to behave and they had booed him. And
that made the booing of Hillary’s name at the
convention inevitable. Bernie the politician had
sold out. But the radical left had already created
Bernie the character who would go on fighting even
when the politician wouldn’t. Bernie could start the
revolution. But he couldn’t stop it. Because it was
never
about him.

The most extreme Sandernistas had converged on
Philly certain that they would win. And for all of
Hillary’s elaborate organization, her networks of
influential cronies, she couldn’t stop them from
ruining her coronation. The DNC was on the run.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz had resigned. And DNC
delegates were outnumbered by angry radical leftists
waving signs denouncing capitalism.

The radical left was trying to devour the Democratic
Party ahead of schedule. And it wasn’t a pleasant
sight. Sandernistas crowded the 30th Street Train
Station holding forth on a rigged election. They had
arrived on stuffy Amtrak trains clutching wadded up
cardboard signs. There were angry grad students down
from Yale upset about income inequality and anti-war
activists from New York City toting models of drones
and photos of crying children. Meanwhile the
temperature kept on climbing.

Philly was an oven. The locals apologized for the
weather as if they had somehow caused it. But the
sullen unforgiving heat seemed to echo the mood of
Sanders supporters. The hotter it got, the louder
and crazier the chants became. At the heart of what
was supposed to be a celebration of Hillary, a
passionate portion of her party’s base was demanding
that she be sent to jail. It was a secret wish that
Bernie Sanders had been forced to swallow and
abandon, but his supporters had not forgotten. And
they would not forget.

Even before Bernie Sanders could sell out his
followers at the DNC, the rising tension reached a
crescendo and broke. The heat that had been growing
all day could continue no more. Torrents of rain
gushed down from the sky. Lightning flashed past
skyscraper scaffolding and thunder boomed louder
than the loudspeakers. Furious gusts of wind blew
rain past a handful of umbrellas that had been used
as parasols against the sun. The MSNBC stage was
quickly deserted. And the Sandernistas, like drowned
rats, raised up their cardboard signs as makeshift
umbrellas against the rain.

Hours later, the final betrayal took hold. Bernie
Sanders spoke at the DNC and sold out his loyalists.
But they too had been preparing for the end.

More than one Sandernista spoke wistfully to me of
Jill Stein and the Green Party. One leftist messiah
had failed them. Bernie Sanders had put the
Democratic Party ahead of the radical left’s agenda.
But there were always uncompromising leftist
radicals who would never be practical no matter
what.

Sanders’
own supporters booed him. They booed any mention of
Hillary. And they rode Amtrak home clutching wet
signs calling for socialized medicine and an end to
capitalism. Whether it is the Soviet Union or the
Sanders Union, the left never recognizes that its
revolutions have failed. It never learns anything
from history except how to hate harder.

The Democratic Party had allowed the left to take
over. And the left has no sensible stopping point.
It is an endless cycle of revolutions, of mad
political agendas and madder personalities that will
not stop. Leftists like Hillary Clinton and Bernie
Sanders unleash revolutions that they cannot
control.

That is what always happens to the left. It is what
happened at Berniegeddon in Philadelphia.

The Bernie dream is dead, but the dream of a
totalitarian revolution of the left lives on. Next
to the great historical monuments of America, the
Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, Benjamin
Franklin’s grave and the Tomb of the Unknown
Revolutionary War Soldier, the left vented its
hatred for this country and its desire to erase its
existence and its freedoms from the earth.